


so bright, they nearly broke my heart

by myladybrienne



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amber Encouraged Me, F/M, Tyrion is a Greyjoy, You're all going to be very confused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 08:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19373215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myladybrienne/pseuds/myladybrienne
Summary: the secret history au that absolutely nobody asked for (ok maybe amber asked). tyrion is a greyjoy. tywin is an arryn. i needed people to not be related OKAY?





	so bright, they nearly broke my heart

The snow in the forest was melting and Griffin had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of the situation. He was dead eight days before they even found him. It was the biggest manhunt in Westerosi history – the city guard, sellswords, even a Dothraki khalasar; the university closed, the blacksmith in King’s Landing shut down, people coming from the Westerlands, the Dornish coast, as far away as the Vale.

It is hard to believe that Euron’s simple plan could work so well in spite of these unforeseen events. We hadn’t meant to hide the body well. In fact, we’d not hidden it at all but had simply left it where it was and hoped it would wash up for some luckless passer-by to stumble upon before anyone had even realised that he was missing.

This was a tale that told itself simply and well: the empty wine skin in his pocket, the body washed up at the lake’s edge, and the water in his lungs; a drunken accident, no more, no less, and it might have been left at that, at quiet tears and a small funeral, had it not been for the ice that sheeted the lake; it held him there floating, and eight days later, when the thaw finally came, the city guard and the sellswords and the Dothraki khalasar all saw that they had been walking back and forth over his body until the ice above it cracked under the weight of all of them.

It is difficult to believe that such an uproar took place over an act for which I was, in part, responsible, even more difficult to believe I could have walked through it – the court, the white cloaks, the whispering peasants scattered all across the city like ants in a sugar bowl – without incurring a blink of suspicion. But walking through it all was one thing; walking away, unfortunately, has proved to be quite another, and though once I thought I had left that lake forever on a brisk winter night long ago, now I am not so sure. Now the crowds have left, and life has grown quiet around me. I have come to realise that while for years I might have imagined myself to be somewhere else, in reality I have been there all the time: stood at the edge where the mud is at its most slippery and the crunch of the cold under my boots that night is set only to get louder.

‘What are you doing down here?’ said Griffin, surprised, when he found the four of us waiting for him.

“Why, admiring the moonlight against the water,” said Euron.

And after we stood whispering in the underbrush – one last look at the body and a last look round, no dropped coinage, lost jewellery, everybody got everything? – and then started single file through the woods, I took one last glance back through the saplings that leapt to close the path behind me. Though I remember the walk back and the first lonely flakes of snow that came tumbling through the pines, remember mounting our waiting mares and starting down the road like a band of brothers, with Euron trotting clench-jawed over the cobbled path and the rest of us, close together and chattering like green boys, though I remember only too well the long terrible night that lay ahead and the long terrible days and nights that followed, I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the lake, still and glossy amongst the forest, a picture that will never leave me.

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of secrets, but now there is no other. This is the only secret I will ever try to keep.

 

 


End file.
